- Person
- Amedeo Modigliani
- Lived
- 1884–1920
- Field
- Painting & sculpture
- From
- Italian
The story
Amedeo Modigliani's style drew on many sources. Growing up in Livorno and studying in Florence and Venice, he absorbed the art of antiquity and the Italian Renaissance. After moving to Paris in 1906 he was influenced first by Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso's Blue Period, then by Cézanne. In Montmartre he and his patron, Dr Paul Alexandre, discovered the African and other non-Western art then on show at the Musée du Trocadéro.
According to Hyperallergic's review of the Jewish Museum's 2017 exhibition Modigliani Unmasked, his first non-Western passion, however, was for ancient Egyptian art. The review links it to his relationship with the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, whom he met in 1910 when she was visiting Paris on her honeymoon. Akhmatova, tall and dark-haired, embodied his ideal of beauty, and she posed for a number of his drawings.
In drawings made from about 1908, but mostly around 1911, Modigliani began to integrate the lessons of Cubism into his work. He reduced his figures to slices of curved and straight lines and gave the poses of his models, including several studies of a nude possibly Akhmatova, a solemn, hieroglyphic grandeur. Unlike the Cubists, he never broke his subjects into shards and facets; his figures remained whole.
The exhibition, curated by Mason Klein and drawn largely from the collection of Paul Alexandre, displayed these drawings alongside ancient artefacts to show the connections. In one passage a silver Egyptian statuette from the Metropolitan Museum of Art stood in front of a group of Modigliani's limestone heads, carved from blocks taken from Paris building sites, which the reviewer described as African, Cycladic and Romanesque all at once.
These experiments led directly to his mature style, seen in the carved heads of 1911–13 and in the portraits and nudes of his last years: long necks, oval faces and almond eyes, combining the clean lines of ancient and non-Western sculpture with the grace of the Italian tradition. It is a style that remains instantly recognisable more than a century later.
Why it matters
Modigliani showed how artists could draw on the art of many cultures and eras to create something entirely new, an approach that continues to inspire.
About Amedeo Modigliani
Sephardic Jewish painter and sculptor from Livorno whose elongated portraits and nudes made him a legend of Montparnasse; he died in poverty at thirty-five.
More about Amedeo Modigliani
- Amedeo Modigliani created a new language of portraitureAmedeo Modigliani, from a Sephardic Jewish family in Livorno, created portraits and nudes with elongated faces and necks that became some of the most admired images in modern art.
- Amedeo Modigliani painted a generation of artistsAmedeo Modigliani's portraits of his friends, including Chaïm Soutine, Moïse Kisling, Jacques Lipchitz, Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera and Jean Cocteau, form a gallery of the School of Paris.
Sources
- Amedeo Modigliani's Identity Politics Hyperallergic
- Amedeo Modigliani Wikipedia
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